This invention pertains to restaurants and, more particularly, to a process for semiautomatic production of pizza.
It is important that pizza be sliced and served while hot or packaged and delivered while hot since customers do not generally want or like cold pizza. While pizza can be reheated, reheated pizza is often soggy and lacks the appeal of freshly cooked hot pizza. It has been estimated by some that pizza loses about 100 degrees Fahrenheit per minute if not kept heated or packaged in thermal insulation.
In an effort to automate, modernize, and increase the production of pizza for quicker delivery to customers, conveyor pizza ovens have been installed in some fast food pizza franchises and pizza parlors in which pizza are automatically conveyed through a continuous pizza oven. While this practice is an improvement, it has caused numerous problems. For example, in the past, hot cooked pizza has been conveyed to stainless steel tables or other metal cutting surfaces for slicing. Unfortunately, steel tables and metal surfaces rapidly cool the pizza. If not quickly removed or if left unattended, cooked pizzas can pile up on the table and backup on the conveyor, which can cause some of the pizzas to collide, buckle, deform or fall off the table and conveyor, resulting in a gooey mess, food wastage, consumer delays, and needless expense. Sometimes the situation becomes so aggravated that pizzas backup all the way on the conveyor into the oven, blocking the oven's exit, so that the cooked pizzas cannot exit the oven and are burned or cinged. These situations can cause enormous frustration, anxiety and stress for pizza personnel and management.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide an improved food preparation process and food paging signaling system which overcomes most, if not all of the preceding problems.